To walk through the process using an example, let's say we are migrating to the latest version of Windows 10. Since we are already late in the game, this migration has to serve as a preparation for future upgrade cycles as well and needs to be managed as tightly as possible to make repeatable and industrialized.

A few weeks ago, we had an interesting internal discussion about whether or not Microsoft might be moving towards once-a-year upgrades to fall in line with the upgrade pace that most enterprises have settled into. The idea was that while they would still officially release two updates:

A Spring Update that would include the new features suitable for enterprises that were very efficient in managing their upgrade process and wanted early access to all the new capabilities and

A Fall Update that includes the Spring Update features but is more mature targeted to larger enterprises.

It is easy to get caught up in Microsoft's marketing message that tells us application compatibility with Windows 10 isn't an issue any more. In fact, Microsoft claims that 99% of all Windows 7 applications run on Windows 10 — based on its extensive telemetry data. As an IT manager responsible for migrating tens or even hundreds of thousands of users to Windows 10, we want to believe it because it would make our life so much easier. We all drank the Kool-Aid.

But unfortunately, the real world doesn't look quite as rosy for our enterprise organizations. I sat down withGreg Lambert, a long time friend and the CEO of our long-time partners Application Readiness, to take a look at some numbers around real-world app compatibility issues that enterprises and other large organizations are facing both with Windows 10 transformation and Windows 10 Servicing, and why they could be so much more difficult today than they were only five years ago. Here is what we found:

SPOILER ALERT: The short answer is "Yes, it is definitely worth it to download the new one!" About 30% of the project plan is new or overhauled to accommodate the WaaS management component, but you can also reuse all the work you have previously done in the old project plan and simply combine them into one.

On May 30 and July 2, Juriba's CTO, Barry Angell, presented a session entitled 'How to get your executive management fired up about Evergreen IT after your Windows 10 migration' at the Ivanti Windows 10 Summit. The conference was hosted entirely online and it is still available to watch on-demand.

A few weeks ago, I participated in two interesting sessions at the Microsoft Ignite Tour: one about Microsoft Autopilot, which we have extensively covered in the past, and one about Desktop Analytics, which is the forthcoming upgrade to Microsoft's Windows Analytics telemetry tool. With the release due shortly, we thought we would share some information on this significant update.

Last month, we partnered with Flexera to present the webinar entitled "Time is up for Windows 7: How to position your organization for Windows 10 and beyond" hosted by myself and Adam Jeffries, Senior Solution Engineer at Flexera.

We all know that hindsight is always 20/20. There is probably nothing more frustrating than realizing that you just made a huge mistake, and then looking back and realizing that you should have known that that was a bad idea. But sometimes, we also receive really bad advice that overrides our gut feeling or better judgement.

Whatever caused the misstep, we all learn from mistakes — but it's always easier to learn through someone else's mistakes. So, we compiled below the worst pieces of advice we have ever heard on the topic of managing an effective IT Transformation. This way, if you hear one of these common myths, you'll know to be wary of it and consider it twice.

Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting a webinar with our partner Flexera entitled "Time is up for Windows 7: How to position your organization for Windows 10 and beyond". If you missed it or you had to drop out during it, don't worry — you can access the on-demand version below.

Over the past few years, we have seen our fair share of failed and dangerously inefficient enterprise attempts to keep Windows 10 and Office 365 Servicing up-to-date. Often, the organization took longer than anticipated to run through the first initial migration, skipped an update to come up for air, just to drown under the workload of the feature update roll out, for which it had vastly underestimated the risk and work effort. Ever worse, these updates are often managed manually, with antiquated and inadequate project management practices!

If you recently tried to find anything on Microsoft Office — for example on the enterprise section of Office.com — you might have noticed that there isn't much mention of Microsoft's on-premise productivity application suite anymore.

The vast majority of Microsoft's marketing communication and sales conversation is about Office 365! This is not an oversight or a temporary marketing campaign — but rather a strategic push to move enterprise customers away from the perpetually licensed Office fat client and onto the subscription-based, always up-to-date Office 365. Moreover, now that Office 2019 is about to be released, many enterprises are asking themselves: "Should we consider Office 2019, or is it not the right time to switch to Office 365 ProPlus?"

Rolling out Office 365 can be very exciting considering the value it will add to your organization in terms of unified communication, collaboration, and business processes! But it can be equally terrifying if you think about all the dependencies of users, mailboxes, delegates, mail archives, public folders, groups, instant messaging, ... the list goes on and on.

After the initial migration is completed, Microsoft will release two larger Office client feature updates and monthly security updates to increase productivity for your end users and tighten security. However, just like Windows as a Service, these larger feature updates will need to be rolled out effectively as they can also be considered a mini-migration.

Some enterprises assume that because they just hired an expert organization to take this project off their hands, they can simply drop the ball and let the integrator pick it up and run with it. But while your outsourcer brings a tremendous value to the table, it is completely unrealistic to expect that they will do the best job possible without associated input from your side.

According to our own research, only 44% of organizations are set on managing this IT Transformation internally; 28% are about to issue a Request-for-Proposal, 14% have not decided yet, and 14% have already engaged with a service integrator to outsource this massive project.

To walk through the process using an example, let's say we are migrating to the latest version of Windows 10. Since we are already late in the game, this migration has to serve as a preparation for future upgrade cycles as well and needs to be managed as tightly as possible to make repeatable and industrialized.

Traditionally, enterprises tackled large IT transformation projects such as OS migrations, infrastructure upgrades, or email migrations, one at a time in what is commonly termed a "big bang" approach.

These projects would often take between 12-36 months and were repeated every five to six years — or only when absolutely necessary. After years of Business As Usual (BAU) running, project sponsors would quickly add other items to the scope, resulting in project delivery that almost always went over budget, past the due date and cost a fortune.

Do you dread having to pitch Windows 10 Service Management to your executives? Will they perceive it as yet another service they have to dole out cash for or think it is Business-as-Usual and not understand why you need additional resources and budget to upgrade to the latest version of Windows 10 every six to twelve months?

When today's CIO talks about Digital Transformation, they are looking at a huge number of IT initiatives to increase productivity, reduce cost, improve agility and deliver the best experience to customers.

With so many market options, our CIOs are spending a lot of time and energy on scouting out new technology to enable their Digital Transformation initiatives. But it is also an opportunity to look at our own end user platforms and ensure that our own employees are as productive as possible and also receiving the best possible IT experience. This trend results in a surge of popularity for cloud computing, virtualization, and Evergreen IT — often complicating future platform choices!

Although the decision regarding which physical or virtual platforms your end users will be running on is important as it directly impacts the productivity of your employees, it is often neglected in the planning process or treated as an afterthought.

On May 30 and July 2, Juriba's CTO, Barry Angell, presented a session entitled 'How to get your executive management fired up about Evergreen IT after your Windows 10 migration' at the Ivanti Windows 10 Summit. The conference was hosted entirely online and it is still available to watch on-demand.

This brand-new project plan template is the sequel to our extremely successful Windows 10 Enterprise Migration Project Plan that was originally published in September of 2015. While the previous project plan focused on the initial migration to Microsoft's new operating system, this new project plan enables technology executives, IT pros, and BAU managers to plan and execute their ongoing Windows-as-a-Service update management in the most effective way possible.

But those ancient IT processes and policies used to manage legacy apps are inadequate to handle modern technology updates. Today, most enterprises are much more agile, having moved applications into the cloud, or utilizing the power of Software-as-a-Service. However, most are still maintaining a layer of dinosaur legacy applications and other mission-critical on-premise software in massive data centers. Since most IT organizations are unable or unwilling to change how they manage IT, they still use IT processes and policies that date back more than twenty years!

The quality of customer service has a massive impact on how consumers interact with the service provider — whether that provider is an internal department, an outsource partner, or a company providing goods and services externally. Studies have shown that one out of two customers will stop doing business with a company because of a poor service experience.

In the last few years, enterprise IT departments have faced a unique set of challenges: On the one hand, they have morphed from a supporting entity to a business enabler, and are maintaining increasingly complex IT landscapes whilst battling significantly larger cyber security threats than ever before. On the other hand, they have to manage more change with fewer resources and stagnant or minimally-increasing budgets.

A few weeks ago, we spoke about the Digital Workplace and how it came a long way from being an abstract concept that a lot of companies saw value in, but did not have the technology to support their needs properly, to becoming a reality for a lot of enterprises as they embraced server-hosted virtual desktops.

As organizations are now embarking on their Windows 10 migrations, as well as considering Evergreen IT as a long-term IT goal in order to become more agile, scalable and flexible, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is experiencing a technology-induced revival. It's been a much slower adoption than many analysts expected, but more companies are now virtualizing desktops than ever before!

Gartner expected the hosted virtual desktop market to grow to 76 million users by the end of this year. And it seems the growth is not slowing down anytime soon. Most analysts forecast anywhere from 8.9% CAGR (IDC for the entire VCC market) up to 27% (depending on the analysts' definition of VDI) during the period 2016-2020.

As more and more enterprises are starting to embrace Virtual Desktop Infrastructure to save costs, tighten security and improve manageability and compliance as well as give their employees more device flexibility and accessibility options, many fail to consider the generational change in the workforce that is happening right now.

Traditionally, User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is performed at the end of a long software development cycle by the intended audience under real-world conditions. By then, engineering has performed a battery of technical tests to ensure the software works as expected. However, in some cases, engineering's understanding of the business requirements and user needs versus what the user was actually looking for are two very different things. This is where UAT usually comes in.

As your organization evolves, and demand for business flexibility increases, the proliferation of applications each end user works with tends to grow in volume as well. Consequently, your IT department works to cope with an increasingly complicated application environment, and you begin to dream of initiating a Software Asset Lifecycle Management project that will bring order to the chaos.

What’s the name of that application Employee A is running on her desktop? Is it the same as the similar title running on another computer by Employee B in a nearby department? You cannot get an accurate idea of how much software you have deployed if you don’t know the names and locations of each installed application.

If software is not named consistently, you might see one copy that includes the name of the vendor and another that has a truncated or abbreviated version of the same name, or a different vendor entirely (think Macromedia and Adobe - both now Adobe Systems). It might seem like you have five applications when actually you only have five names for the same thing.

A stressed out, harried IT department is a sign that your organization has bitten off more than it can chew. There’s no need to have circumstances lead to the point where your IT professionals are pulling out their hair in frustration and growing ragged from lack of sleep because of the burden that comes from launching one big bang project after the other.

Instead, gradual, incremental changes to your mission-critical software assets will be much more effective and will help your organization stay on track. Many larger organizations have recognized this not only as a possible way to gain a long-term competitive advantage but also a way to significantly cut cost and resources.

In this 3-part series, we are exploring vital stepping stones that pave the way to achieving this. Last week, we talked about software asset lifecycle management, and today we will look into application normalization. In a few days, we will take a closer look at software cataloging. With that in mind, you may be wondering how important application normalization is to your Windows 10 and Evergreen IT projects.

Today, enterprises need to be able to adapt faster to changing environments to fend off competitive pressure; they need to be able to grow faster or scale back when needed — all while reducing costs and increasing the value of the services offered.

The demand for managing information technology assets on a continual basis reflects a natural consequence of software developments (e.g., cloud computing, software-as-a-service) as well as changing business demands. Think about your Apple or Android phone constantly updating applications in the background, or Windows 10 and its regular patches.

But back in the corporate world, the requirement for control of the environment is a significant hurdle to adopting the most adaptive change methodologies. Imagine if an untested change brought down your main trading application! The challenge is how to take a better approach but retain control. Ideally, Evergreen IT results in increased efficiencies, more agility and better scalability across the entire enterprise. For example, IT transformations could be managed in an agile fashion (business as usual), rather than in one-off big bang migration projects.

With the Windows 2003 Server end of life time bomb now passed on July 14th 2015, we thought we would take the time to document our advice for Server 2003 migration project planning activities based on our own server migration experience. Download our Server 2003 Project Plan for free.

2018 was the busiest year for our development team here at Juriba so we thought it might be useful to put out a summary of the major changes. As customer requests for functionality grow so does the product, hence the increasing need to provide more updates, more frequently, and the release of two major new versions of Dashworks (5.2 and 5.3).

We are excited to introduce you to the latest version of Dashworks, 5.3! After an extensive set of customer feedback sessions, our development team has been focusing on improving the capacity/booking slot functionality for this release. Capacity is used to set limits on the number of deployments that can happen within a specific site, business unit or time of day. Previously, Dashworks could only manage capacity by day and type (e.g. wipe and load vs replacement), but with this new release, the system can manage slots at an even more detailed level. For example, you can now have a deployment unit called 'Site A - Finance' that runs from Date A to Date B, and has 20 AM capacity slots and 20 PM capacity slots with a blackout period for end of year dates. As always, it is thanks to the insightful feedback provided by our customers that has helped drive product innovation and make the drive towards IT transformation and Evergreen IT management a possibility with Juriba Dashworks!

With Windows 7 approaching end of support in January 2020, most enterprises are accelerating plans to migrate to Windows 10 in 2018 to take advantage of the new or improved cyber-security capabilities, and avoid an expensive custom support agreement with Microsoft. However, at this time, fewer organizations than expected have taken the plunge because they dread the Windows-as-a-Service servicing model that requires continuous upgrades and a more agile, Evergreen IT management approach.

Ahead of the game isPillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, an international law firmrecognized by the Financial Timesas one of the Most Innovative Law Firms three years running. Today, I want to share a little sneak peek at our latest customer case study and tell you the story of how Dashworks transformed this dreaded Windows 10 migration experience into an IT Transformation initiative that the 700+ lawyers and their staff could not only get behind, but actively participate in!

Rolling out Office 365 can be very exciting considering the value it will add to your organization in terms of unified communication, collaboration, and business processes! But it can be equally terrifying if you think about all the dependencies of users, mailboxes, delegates, mail archives, public folders, groups, instant messaging, ... the list goes on and on.

After the initial migration is completed, Microsoft will release two larger Office client feature updates and monthly security updates to increase productivity for your end users and tighten security. However, just like Windows as a Service, these larger feature updates will need to be rolled out effectively as they can also be considered a mini-migration.

We are excited to introduce you to the latest version of Dashworks, 5.3! After an extensive set of customer feedback sessions, our development team has been focusing on improving the capacity/booking slot functionality for this release. Capacity is used to set limits on the number of deployments that can happen within a specific site, business unit or time of day. Previously, Dashworks could only manage capacity by day and type (e.g. wipe and load vs replacement), but with this new release, the system can manage slots at an even more detailed level. For example, you can now have a deployment unit called 'Site A - Finance' that runs from Date A to Date B, and has 20 AM capacity slots and 20 PM capacity slots with a blackout period for end of year dates. As always, it is thanks to the insightful feedback provided by our customers that has helped drive product innovation and make the drive towards IT transformation and Evergreen IT management a possibility with Juriba Dashworks!

It's hard to believe, but on October 15, 2018 Juriba turned 10 so we thought we'd write about our journey! It all started in 2008 from Julia Bell's (our Chief Operating Officer) house and 7 million assets migrated later, Juriba has achieved 10 years in business. We thought it would be nice to celebrate with all our readers by listing our key milestones in this blog post.

According to Gartner, Windows 7 is likely to be the last version of Microsoft OS that gets deployed to everybody through big corporate-wide migration. The claim, which made a recent issue of Database and Network Journal, suggests that many organisations will also use alternative client computing architectures for standard PCs, and move toward virtualisation and cloud computing in the next five years.

Virtualization is the future. Getting to virtualization is the present. And it’s going to be painful for most large corporates.

According to this article in CIO Magazine, 38 percent of IT managers are timing their investment in desktop and application virtualization with enterprise Windows 7 migration because both have a direct impact on each other.